


The Bartering Room

by kay_cricketed



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Character Death, Gen, Magical Realism, references to disabilities, self-sacrifice to the extreme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-08
Updated: 2015-09-08
Packaged: 2018-04-19 16:26:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4753103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kay_cricketed/pseuds/kay_cricketed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time his brother dies, Leonardo has a body whole and strong to barter.  </p>
<p>In which the universe gives Leonardo exactly what he needs to protect his brothers, and it is the beginning of the end for them all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bartering Room

**i.**

The first time his brother dies, Leonardo has a body whole and strong to barter. 

"I would not ask you to do this," Splinter says, eyes the dark of juggernaut constellations, stars long cold. His whiskers quiver in broken formation. One whisker bleeds at its root, a pink foam dried into his fur. He has done nothing but pull and scratch at himself for hours—more hours than Leonardo can bear to count—standing over the shrouded table in Donatello's lab, keeping his son company while they wait for morning to thaw the ground.

Leonardo cups his father's hands, and feels how thin and wizened each finger has become with age. He tries to smile, but he's too tired, too lost. "I know, _sensei_. It wasn't something you had to ask."

"My son," says his father, broken.

There is no guarantee of any success. All he has to go on is his father's word that there are more paths than feet are able to find, and a balled-up corner of his soul flooded in quiet light, anticipatory, knowing. It hadn't always been there. Leonardo wonders when the tiny space began to grow: the wet pop of breath in his throat when Michelangelo needed it more? The way cold had come slowly and insidious beneath Leonardo's hand, like some small animal dying in stages, blurring the line between _here_ and _past_ beyond recognition? Donatello had been able to give a precise time—he'd bitten into the watch, cracked his molar on the words—but Leonardo knows death. He feels it stretch between each minute and linger, the reverberation of its strings juddering through his baby brother's corpse. 

Michelangelo walks away from them, a candle that has gone out but still hiccups smoke. He leaves, and he is gone. He is gone, and the Bartering Room tendrils through Leo's diaphragm and builds.

Raphael won't survive this. It's not as if Leonardo has a choice. Maybe if it had been him—or maybe if it'd been any of them—but not Michelangelo. The universe has taken—too much. Someone has to put a cup of rice back in the cooker. Someone has to keep Raphael from taking a pound of flesh, and Donatello from losing seven pounds more, and their father from the burial.

"Do not give foolishly," Splinter says, the only piece of advice he can harvest from his ruin.

Leonardo nods. He pulls away.

(He will give with abandon. He will pay whatever price. How to play mahjong—his first memory of tasting a tomato, over ripe and lush. His right hand. His left.)

He removes the sheet from over Michelangelo's face. There is still sleep crusted in one of his eyes. Leonardo gently removes it with the corner of the linen, an uncurling hope within him, stronger than sorrow and made of copper. Copper is changeable and reactive. He can taste the patina, verdigris coating him from within as it finds tepid blood-based waters. There, hidden, he finds a place.

The laboratory goes dim and soft around him. It must be what Michelangelo had felt, those last moments—something resembling sleep, something safe.

Leonardo closes his eyes and prepares to find out what he's worth.

**ii.**

He is worth more than the price asked. A few trifles that won't be missed—the flutter in his stomach when a girl laughs, two eggshell-thin layers of plastron that coalesce into a sphere, his memorization of _The Art of War_ —and many things that will be, that gouge deep and leave scars. His teeth ache, when before they had been perfect. Tea tastes sour against his gums. He can no longer stand still in place without losing time, minutes trickling away if they sense his inattention. Half of the vision in his right eye. A memory dear to him, of waking up injured to find Michelangelo reading beside the bed, keeping watch over him in the sallow lamplight in the farmhouse. He had smiled at Leonardo and said something, something _significant_ , something that changed Leonardo.

Without hesitation, Leonardo cuts the words loose. They are taken away.

(The price seems so small, in comparison. So easy.)

Later, Leonardo will come to understand this is the nature of the bartering system. The first deal is always the easiest. The terms never sweeten; they only pull more weight, hungrier. But now—as he feels warmth return to his brother's corpse, as he hears Michelangelo wail thin into the stillness—now, Leonardo doesn't give a damn.

**iii.**

" _How_ ," says Donatello.

"Don't," Leonardo tells him. "Don't ask. Don't look at it too closely."

The living room bricks are painted with the shadow play of the television set. Nestled in a pile of pillows on the couch, Michelangelo laughs, hogging a bowl of popcorn that Raphael made for that very reason. They leave the empty bottles of Gatorade on the floor like rows of hollow stalagmites.

Donatello watches them. He wants to ask—the words are almost visible in the corner of his mouth—but he only shifts closer to Leonardo, sharing his body heat. None of them can shake the chill that's settled into the lair, bone deep.

"What have you done," whispers Donatello.

Leonardo says, "I know."

**iv.**

The Bartering Room becomes a house. It crafts a guest bedroom and then a spiraling staircase up Leonardo's ribs, adding story after story, culminating in an attic at the back of Leonardo's neck. The rooms fill with that immeasurable quality that calls. The house grows into its foundations. Raphael's lung collapses in a dank alleyway south of the Bronx. He clutches Leonardo's hand the whole way down, down, down. He is too scared to speak. 

Leonardo holds him close to his chest, covering as much as he can, as if the rain might do more damage than the Foot. He covers his brother's eyes. He goes in fierce and fighting, ready to argue the merits of this memory or that, one appendage over the other—he'd like to keep two legs for walking them home. He comes away poorer. He comes away richer.

Too easy: he can no longer hear the trill of birds, carves out the entire hiragana alphabet. If recollections and daydreams are taken from him, he no longer knows, but there are inside jokes that his brothers make that fall flat on his ears. There is a dagger Leonardo doesn't recognize in his bedroom. Meditation brings him to an empty corridor without doors, lined in orange paper cranes and a soundless pressure. Physically, Leonardo can never catch his breath. He trains and fights and calms himself, and none of it eases the strain.

Too easy: they stumble home in the protection of the shadows, and the Bartering Room opens a window in Leonardo's heart.

**v.**

His father makes strong Turkish coffee to replace the tea and wipes Leonardo's skin clean with a dishtowel that smells like soap, kindnesses to ease his loss. He doesn't speak, and Leonardo's relieved and grateful. There shouldn't be anything to say. He's only done what he had to do as leader, as brother. He's only given away—things.

"What did you give up?" Leonardo asks, finally.

"For my sons?" asks Splinter with a weary smile. "For the opportunity to see you take your first steps? To give you a chance to learn joy? When you were drowned—when your brothers starved?"

Leonardo drinks the coffee deep, takes the heat into him and basks. "I'm sorry," he says, meaning it. They have taken a toll on their father: years and folds of ear and a woman he must have loved, once.

"I always knew you would be the one," says Splinter. He looks both sad and proud. "Even when you were a child, I saw it in you. It was only a cardboard box then. Wrinkled; you pried at it."

"Is that why you chose me to lead?" Leonardo asks, awkwardly. The thought might have prickled and bitten him once. Now that he knows his own worth, what it can buy him, he has no need of insecurity, anxiety, or disappointment. His purpose, his existence, is superfluous to its reason for being. He is a donor, a composite of valuables. His brothers are always on the shelf.

Splinter refills his cup of coffee. He doesn't answer. He says instead, "There will be days you have regret. Sometimes, the regret will be strong enough to leave fingerprints in you. Don't despair, my son. Days will pass, and take you farther away." The milk trickles into the coffee in a pale snaked line. 

He does not ask Leonardo to keep some things for himself. Perhaps he recognizes the futility. Perhaps he is more selfish than Leonardo, and forgetful. It doesn't matter—this moment, too, can be sold.

**vi.**

Raphael dies twice more. A bullet that nicks an artery. Septic shock.

The third time, there isn't even a body to watch over. Leonardo only knows his brother is dead because of a lurch in his belly. A heaviness overtakes him, like a long day of rain. He buries his face in his hands and does not cry, although he wants to, and when the vertigo has passed, he barters.

His ability to tell a white lie: snuffed. The way a rock feels when it soaks up too much sun. The smell of lilacs, and what it felt like to be alone in a rye field and hear the universe creak along its track. Video games no longer appeal. Taste disappears completely. He can no longer hold a ninjaken without shaking, the tremors riding up his shoulders and down his shell. He can't remember the last time he had a dream—did he ever dream? Leonardo closes his eyes and entire miles go by, hours turning upside down on themselves, and he can no longer count past thirty, or write his own name without losing its sound.

What does he remember? The sound of Raphael shouting in the sewer tunnels. Their seventh birthday party, but none of the ones before that. A crocodile, like the one in the storybooks. April's watery grin, but not her hair color. Being loved.

Being loved, he wraps in yarn and resolve. He already knows his time with it is short. If he carries the reminder more often—if he shows it off a little—no one's the worse.

**vii.**

Winter slinks into the lair and poisons the groundwater. Donatello tests for contaminants and keeps them stocked with bottled water. He doesn't ask Leonardo about the miracles anymore; his science is listless and distant, and he rarely meets Leonardo's eyes. It is enough that his brothers are here, Leonardo tells himself, and refuses to want more. In time, he will discover the words to help Donatello make peace.

One morning, Donatello doesn't come to training. He doesn't come to breakfast, either. His door is locked and the room beyond it silent.

Leonardo breaks in while everyone else gets ready for the day. Dread curdles inside him.

There is no enemy, no visible intruder. There is no gauntness in his brother's face or body. The blankets are warm enough. His workstation is littered with half-empty water bottles and a Mars bar wrapper. It isn't enough. Donatello has already gone stiff—he's been alone for over ten hours, slipping away without visitors—his hand splayed over an open book on his plastron. He looks as if he's sleeping.

"No, please," says Leonardo, a hook in his collarbone. He shakes and shudders and curls into bed with his brother, terrified of the moment he has to touch him, wanting nothing more than to share their warmth again. "No. No, not this."

He presses a silent scream into Donatello's pillow and lays it all out across the table. 

(The day his family drew him away from death, too, and brought him home. The comprehensive knowledge and art of a martial arts master. Language. Earnest admiration for his father. Scars Raphael had put in him—scars Raphael had sewn shut again. A taste for natural light. Reading, oh, how he loves to read.)

The Bartering Room is lit with the summer gloaming, a world away from the ice clutch of the lair. It's filled with boxes and cabinets and urns: vessels in which Leonardo can put things, then gift them. The border trim is the color of Michelangelo's mask, a reminder, kept bright and bold. It looks at the table and all Leonardo piles on it, and keeps piling on it, and waits for more.

(The ability to lift his head when he's been knocked down too many times. Laughter, like kindling in his heart. The first time, every time, his father said _very good, Leonardo_. He doesn't need to hear so long as Donatello can teach him to sign. He doesn't need legs; he will learn to make his own way. A memory of childhood: folded in a newspaper with his brothers, squirming and clumsy, shells knocking into shells. The formula for happiness.)

And he ought to have known—that Donatello, gifted and sweet, that Donatello, steadfast and stubborn, that their amazing Donatello would be worth so much more than Leonardo combined—

(Self. Identity. A body, once, whole and strong to barter.)

The house groans, its wooden beams lodged into Leonardo's cartilage, its skylights the only way through which his esophagus draws in air. It fills him so entirely, there is nothing left but rooms with the lights left on as warnings.

(Loving them, being loved. The raw, pulpy seed of his heart that keeps pulse for them—that will keep going, long after Leonardo is a stamp in the earth.)

He holds onto that for as long as he can. He holds on.

**viii.**

You could, the Bartering Room says, pay it forward.

**ix.**

Donatello wakes alone to the pipes in the bathroom rattling, the sound of the shower. Someone else is watching the television—a morning talk show. He drifts to the world, his vision blurred. He feels strange. He feels fragile, as if his skin is newly grafted. He feels as if he's worth something.


End file.
